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Apps For Your Closet

When you are working with peoples’ closets all day you see A LOT of things, and meet a lot of people who are looking for a solution to their organizational quandaries. But lately, I’ve been seeing something very interesting; clients are experimenting with closet organization apps on their smartphones and tablet PCs, and they are having varying amounts of success.

Like all things, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to choosing an app to add to your life. Here’s a quick guide to help you sort it all out.

1. NETROBE

We like Netrobe for iOS (iPhones and iPads) a lot, and we’re giving it a gold star.

The App requires a bit of TLC in terms of uploading EVERY article of clothing in your closet to its database. But it’s worth the investment, because once it’s there you have a categorized inventory of everything you own. You can mix and match outfits and save them to your “styleboard” for quick reference later, you can even go shopping and match clothing that your thinking about purchasing against the things in your closet.

You can even save items you’ve found online or taken pictures to a “lookbook” and then take it with you when your shopping, too.

If you’re so inclined, Netrobe even has an agenda calender in which you can save your outfit picks for each day of the week or special occasions.

Lastly, there isn’t anything these days that isn’t social, and Netrobe is no exception.

Of course, you don’t have to take advantage of this feature if you don’t want to. But even people who don’t like sharing their styleboard outfits out, enjoy a little fashion voyeurismperusing through the outfits that other people are sharing, and even saving them to their own lookbooks.

All in all, Netrobe is a nifty app that, like anything else, gives you back what you put in. But Netrobe is very neat, with a well thought out user interface and list of features. And we think it gives you back a lot for your time and energy investment. In terms of financial investment: it’s free.

2. STYLEBOOK

Stylebook is also an iOS phenomenon (iPads and Iphones only), with a full version that costs $3.99. But before you discount it in favor of a free app, please consider that Stylebook’s full version is very VERY full. Stylebook is the Rolls Royce of closet apps.

There’s hardly a fashion magazine that hasn’t at some point mentioned the Stylebook app, and there are even a few technology magazines that have featured it too. It’s simply loaded with features.

It’s free-form canvas for creating looks actually let’s you put the outfit together so you can see what everything looks like side-by-side. Then you can categorize it any way you like. For example, as a going-out outfit, or a casual look. You can do this with the items in your closet, or with items you find online, or in person.

Stylebook has the sharing capabilities and calendar-planning functionality you’d expect, but add to that a packing list feature, a shopping feature, personal size tracking, and an built-in, interactive expert style blog.

Stylebook will even keep track of what you’ve been wearing and generate statistical data for you on your own personal style trends. It’s a beast of a closet app, and for that, we’re giving Stylebook two gold stars.

3. CLOTH

Cloth, free for iOS (iPads and iPhones) doesn’t get any stars from us. Essentially, it’s simply an alternative camera role to store “selfie” photos of your outfits. There are some organizational features here, and some sharing features too, but there really isn’t anything to do with closet inventory at all. It’s essentially a mirror with a memory, which is cool, but doesn’t offer anything above and beyond your phone, so while we’ll list it here, because that is something, we’ll save our precious gold stars, too.

There are a multitude of apps in addition to these three which you’ll encounter when searching specifically for “closet apps”. However, we’ve found that most of them fall into the subtly, but importantly different category of “fashion apps”.

But, if you want to leverage the bleeding edge of modern technology to bring your closet into the future, and get an optimized experience when picking out outfits, shopping for clothing, or organizing your life, than we recommend one of these three.